FG To Pay Jobless Youths N20,000 Monthly To Sweep Markets, Clear Gutters And The Likes (see details)

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In an attempt to curb the country's high unemployment rate, the Federal Government has carried out a scheme that will see unemployed youth in rural areas earning N20,000 a month, reports The PUNCH.

The youth will participate in drainage clearing, sweeping markets, road repair, traffic control, and public infrastructure cleaning such as health centers and schools.

Mr Festus Keyamo (SAN), the Minister of State for Labor and Jobs, said this at a news conference on Thursday.

Keyamo said the scheme targets 1,000 youths each from the country's 774 local governments.

The minister said the program is one of the largest social investment schemes any government has to carry out in the history of Nigeria within a short period of time.

The PUNCH notes that the program, known as the Rural Areas Special Public Works Program, is domiciled for implementation in the National Directorate of Employment and is scheduled to take off in October.

The minister’s speech read in part, “The pilot programme earlier approved by Mr. President was designed to mitigate lack of job opportunities in the rural areas through a short-term engagement of 1,000 unemployed persons per local government area for a period of three months.

“It is a dry season/off-season transient job programme and was originally designed for the rehabilitation/maintenance of public and social infrastructure. Participants were to be paid an allowance of N20,000 monthly and were to be recruited largely from the pool of unskilled persons resident in those rural areas.

“This pilot scheme was approved to be implemented in five local government areas in eight states namely: Adamawa, Borno, Ebonyi, Edo, Ekiti, Jigawa, Katsina and Kwara. Beneficiaries are engaged in: drainage digging and clearance, irrigation canals clearance, rural feeder road maintenance, maintenance of the Great Green Wall nurseries and orchards in Borno, Jigawa and Katsina states; traffic control, street cleaning, cleaning of public infrastructure like health centres, schools and the likes. A total of 40,000 direct transient jobs were expected to be created in the eight pilot states.”

Keyamo said the Special Public Works in the Rural Areas is an employment- intensive technique acquired and adapted by the National Directorate of Employment from one of the capacity-building collaborations with the International Labour Organisation in the late 1980s to the middle of the 1990’s.

The minister said for the purpose of transparency and accountability in the process, the President has approved the use of select banks to register and collate data of the beneficiaries.

“The banks will open accounts for all beneficiaries and in the process obtain Bank Verification Numbers for those without accounts.

“All payments would be made from the Central Bank of Nigeria directly to the accounts of the beneficiaries,” he added.